Cordial Conversations: Volunteering on Lei-Feng-Day

Shijiazhuang Daily (石家庄日报) is a paper from Hebei Province’s capital. It is the organ of Shijiazhuang’s CCP party committee and was established on November 18, 1947, six days after the the “People’s Liberation Army” had taken the city. Shijiazhuang Daily also runs a website which is clearly committed to the paper’s heritage. Shijiazhuang Daily and its online platform (Shijiazhuang News Net) aren’t unrivalled in their ideological orthodoxy, but they do live up to the former administrative region’s name of Chili, which, until 1928, included Hebei.

Own report (Wang Geng reporting). Yesterday Yesterday was the 51rst Learning-from-Lei-Feng commemoration day,and it was also fifty years ago that Mao Zedong made his “Learn From Comrade Lei Feng” speech. Yesterday morning, our city held various Lei Feng volunteering service activities. Permanent Provincial Party Committee member propaganda director Ai Wenli and municipal committee propaganda department director Sun Wanyong came to our city’s Times Park to participate in some voluntary tree-planting and other volunteer activities, gave the city a “Lei Feng Diary”, “Benefitting Hebei Province) and other books as gifts, advocated volunteer service and promoted the spirit of Lei Feng.

Ai Wenli and his entourage first came to the park’s plaza to learn about the activities. More than twenty volunteer service groups were on the plaza, carrying out dental services, eyesight tests, Chinese massage, haircut and shaving, legal advice, car, mobile-phone and household appliances repairs, all in all nearly thirty volunteering activities. Ai Wenli had cordial converstations with the participants and Shijiazhuang citizens, asking them about their views and feelings about the Learning-from-Lei-Feng activities. In the park’s rockery, Ai Wenli took part in the task of planting trees and encouraged the volunteers who were with him: “there are more and more young people learning from Lei Feng who are born after the 1980s or 1990s, just like you. Lei Feng’s spirit will never go out of fashion and Lei Feng’s spirit must be inherited and developed ever further.”

Yesterday morning, at the New Railway Station’s entrance, waiting hall, ticketing hall and inquiry counters, at West King Bus Station and at the main traffic crossroads, etc., one could see young peoples’ silhouettes wearing red caps to attract attention, helping to keep the traffic orderly, showing people the way, advocating standing in line, carrying out civilizational guidance, etc.. They were young volunteers from the provincial capital’s [i. e. Shijuazhuang’s] colleges and universities. Shijiazhuang Vocational Technology Institute‘s volunteering student Tian Yudui told this reporter: “being a student, to do some duties in your spare time can help everyone to do something meaningful, something helpful. This is fulfilling and makes you feel that you are valuable.”

Volunteers*) were active in all community areas, some tidying and cleaning the places, some giving advice to older empty-nesters, some using their expertise to carry out useful services. Han Wei does repair work in some household appliance shop in the provincial capital. Yesterday, in the Zhuoda Rose Garden Park’s community area, he offered some voluntary household-appliance repair work. “Usually, after the [spring festival] holidays, when you come to these small community areas and help everyone reparing and maintaining their household appliances, it’s a service which is really welcomed. After helping others, you feel particularly good yourself, and really happy.”

According to provincial civilizational statistics, this city carried out various Lei-Feng activities yesterday, with fourty volunteer groups, nearly two-hundred volunteering organizations, about seven-thousand volunteers in the streets, entering schools, vilages, community areas to popularize knowledge about civilized manners, public civilizational guidance, legal advice, service on the three rural issues, medical services, convenience services, environmental cleaning and maintenance, tree-planting and greening activities, showing care and love for vulnerable groups and other Lei-Feng volunteering activities. Action with a red cap spells the “spirit of Lei Feng”.

*) Here, too, only “silhouettes” were seen. This may be meant to depict a certain atmosphere, or to make all the goodwill appear countless and collective. When it comes to traffic regulation, the silhouette talk could make a lot of real sense, though.